[HN Gopher] Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler
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Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler
Author : matt_d
Score : 44 points
Date : 2026-02-03 15:38 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fosdem.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (fosdem.org)
| Rochus wrote:
| I prefer Simula 67 ;-)
| Smalltalker-80 wrote:
| Yeah, that Algol code is not very pretty :-). I'm sticking with
| my namesake from 1980...
| mhd wrote:
| One thing I always liked about some older languages was being
| able to have blanks in identifiers. Although I see that they
| actually managed to invent a _new_ stropping variant that
| doesn 't work with that... For the "kids"...
| srean wrote:
| Modula-2 happened way before my time but was quite taken by it.
| Especially it's fibres/coroutine features.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26688380
| mrweasel wrote:
| Apparently the Russian Glonass satellites are programmed in
| Modula-2 [1] which seems like a wild choice.
|
| 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2#Russian_radionaviga
| ti...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Well, back in the 1980's up to early 90's, Modula-2 enjoyed
| a mild success in Europe.
|
| Given that it was available in 1978, and the satellites
| launched in 1982, it seems a plausible choice like any
| other, given the computing ecosystem at the time.
| bonzini wrote:
| In 1999 I used Modula-2 for my first computer
| science/programming languages exam at university. The
| environment was a bit like Turbo Pascal 3.0, though with a
| more complete language (TP3 had no modules/units) and
| library, comparable perhaps to TP5.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Units were introduced in Turbo Pascal 4, then TP 5.5
| added OOP based on Apple's Object Pascal, further
| improvements were then based on the Object Pasca / C++
| relationship on Borland's compilers.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The first compiler I ever bought with my own money was a
| Modula-2 compiler for my Atari ST I picked up second hand for
| something like $100 CAD, which was a lot back in the late 80s
| for a teenager.
|
| Was a mistake not to just do C, though. The Atari ST's whole
| OS environment was built with C void pointers and duck typing
| in mind.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Algol 68 was a bit before my time, but c.1980 we did learn Algol
| W (W=Wirth) at Bristol Uni., which was Niklaus Wirth's idea of
| what Algol 68 should have been, and a predeceesor to Pascal,
| Modula-2, etc.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Apart from it being an interesting technical challenge or hobby
| is there any mundane practical reason for creating An Algol 68
| compiler?
| snovymgodym wrote:
| I'd love to be corrected, but my intuition tells me probably
| not.
|
| The only pragmatic use for a modern Algol 68 compiler I can
| think of would be to port a legacy codebase to a modern system,
| but any existing Algol 68 codebase will likely see greater
| porting challenges arising out of the operating system change
| than from the programming language.
| pkal wrote:
| According to https://algol68-lang.org/, and as expressed in the
| recording, the contributors (specifically Marchesi) believe
| that ALGOL 68 continues to have advantages over other languages
| to this day ("more modern, powerful and safe" and "without
| successors"). One mentioned in the video is that the more
| complex, two-level grammars allow properties that would usually
| be described in the semantics of a language to be formally
| expressed in the syntax (the example he gives is the behaviour
| of numeral coercion). I guess this is not a surprise, as van
| Wijngaarden grammars are known to be Turing complete, but
| nevertheless it seems like something interesting thing to
| investiagate! There is a lot of lost wisdom in the past, that
| we dismiss because it doesn't fit into the language we use
| nowadays.
| mushufasa wrote:
| from wikipedia: "ALGOL 68 (short for Algorithmic Language 1968)
| is an imperative programming language member of the ALGOL family
| that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 language,
| designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and
| more rigorously defined syntax and semantics.
|
| The complexity of the language's definition, which runs to
| several hundred pages filled with non-standard terminology, made
| compiler implementation difficult and it was said it had "no
| implementations and no users". This was only partly true; ALGOL
| 68 did find use in several niche markets, notably in the United
| Kingdom where it was popular on International Computers Limited
| (ICL) machines, and in teaching roles. Outside these fields, use
| was relatively limited.
|
| Nevertheless, the contributions of ALGOL 68 to the field of
| computer science have been deep, wide-ranging and enduring,
| although many of these contributions were only publicly
| identified when they had reappeared in subsequently developed
| programming languages. Many languages were developed specifically
| as a response to the perceived complexity of the language, the
| most notable being Pascal, or were reimplementations for specific
| roles, like Ada.
|
| Many languages of the 1970s trace their design specifically to
| ALGOL 68, selecting some features while abandoning others that
| were considered too complex or out-of-scope for given roles. Most
| modern languages trace at least some of their syntax to either C
| or Pascal, and thus directly or indirectly to ALGOL 68"
|
| My guess is someone took the 'no implementations' saying as a
| personal challenge.
| pkal wrote:
| That isn't totally true, even on Linux we have had
| https://jmvdveer.home.xs4all.nl/en.algol-68-genie.html for
| years.
|
| Also, most languages trace back to ALGOL 60 (the C family tree
| goes ALGOL 60 -> BCPL -> CPL -> B -> new B -> C -> ANSI C ->
| ..., though there was some influence such as the idea of
| "casting", but apparently C only has a castrated version of
| what ALGOL 68 had) and Pascal is if anything negativly
| influenced by ALGOL 68 due to Wirth's disagreements with van
| Wijngaarden: https://dcreager.net/people/wirth/1968-closing-
| word/.
| pjmlp wrote:
| There were implementations, e.g. UK Navy had one, even if it
| wasn't 100% complete as per standard.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_68-R
| talideon wrote:
| That wasn't a particularly pleasant talk to watch. While I think
| he was trying to be funny, he really just came across as
| obnoxious. I'm not expecting sweetness and light here, but
| dunking on other languages for no good reason isn't going to
| attract all that many people to using the language.
| pkal wrote:
| To each his own; I really like his presentation style and the
| humor!
| sombragris wrote:
| There's also Algol 68 Genie (a68g), a GPLv3 Algol 68 compiler and
| interpreter:
|
| https://jmvdveer.home.xs4all.nl/en.algol-68-genie.html
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